Elite Harmful’ aliens go on the offensive with Replace 14, a preview

Elite Harmful’ subsequent huge replace goes dwell on Tuesday, bringing warfare to the billions of digital inhabitants of the Milky Approach galaxy. After months of build-up, the sport’s alien race will now start an all-out assault on human occupied area. It’s as much as gamers to decide on the way to interact with this new gameplay — both weapons blazing, by humanitarian missions, or by serving to to unravel the sport’s notoriously advanced in-game puzzles.

The alien race identified to people because the Thargoids first made their look in 2017, about three years after the sport initially launched. Initially, huge Thargoid ships pulled gamers out of hyperspace merely to examine them, like big dolphins toying with a swimmer. However these shut encounters finally turned hostile. Quick ahead to August, and humanity’s final finest hope of a brilliant weapon failed — however not earlier than it antagonized the Thargoids into taking drastic steps to make sure their very own security.

Now a brand new menace has emerged, and it appears to be straight focusing on humanity. For weeks now, so-called “stargoids” have been shifting at quicker than mild pace, with eight of them heading straight for the Bubble — the tiny sphere of populated area with Earth at its core. On Tuesday, these stargoids will lastly decelerate and start their horrible work.

[Warning: What follows will spoil Elite Dangerous’ Update 14 in detail.]

Eight mysterious clouds will arrive within the Bubble beginning on Tuesday, every another than 180 km throughout. The clouds will every have a reputation and a marker seen on the tactical show. Gamers will be capable of scan for these markers, goal them, and finally fly inside them. As soon as inside, they’ll be handled to a few of Elite’s beautiful audio, but additionally to particle and lighting results in contrast to others which have come earlier than.

Throughout a press briefing shared with Polygon final week, we discovered that dozens of mysterious cross-shaped entities reside inside every of those clouds. The entities are propelled by whiffs of the identical inexperienced fuel during which they float. It is going to be as much as gamers to review their actions and learn the way and why they’ve been despatched to the bubble.

Picture: Frontier Developments

As these clouds move by a given star system, they are going to harm and in the end destroy starbases with out participant intervention. Their targets will embrace the most important buildings within the recreation — like Ocellus and Orbis starports. Fight-focused gamers will be capable of camp out at a given starbase and repeatedly do battle with the Thargoids exterior, returning to the touchdown pad solely to refit, refuel, and restore their broken ship. In the meantime, extra humanitarian-focused gamers will be capable of make daring blockade runs with provides, leaving with a cargo maintain crammed with frightened refugees. Builders count on there ought to be a mode of gameplay that appeals to everybody.

“It seems fairly combat-focused, and people are the issues that typically are fairly flashy as effectively,” stated lead recreation designer Luke Betterton, “however […] the gameplay you can undertake in Elite Harmful continues to be gameplay that’s a part of this upcoming replace as effectively. Should you’re a pure dealer, or for those who’re a bit extra of a form of humanitarian kind, there are avenues in there for you to have the ability to proceed that gameplay as effectively. You may simply have a bit extra of a problem coping with it.”

Picture: Frontier Developments

Betterton and senior producer Samantha Marsh harassed that Replace 14, because it’s known as, can be accessible by the whole Elite group — not simply those that bought the current Odyssey growth.

“We now have been extremely centered on bettering the sport expertise, in ensuring that we had been optimizing, fixing,” Marsh stated, referring to the work performed to shore up Odyssey’s buggy launch. “[We have also been] offering gameplay experiences that had been form of bundle experiences — just like the the fleet service interiors, which we actually needed to develop and develop.

Picture: Frontier Developments

“It looks like the correct time to maneuver in direction of modifications that aren’t form of self-contained packages. We’re impacting the entire galaxy now. We’re altering how the sport is de facto present for gamers. […] We really feel prefer it’s a extremely good second to form of actually present that we’re dedicated to seeing the place we will actually push issues and develop areas of the sport as effectively.”

Gamers new and previous will be capable of comply with together with the story of the Thargoid invasion of the Bubble, which can be recurrently up to date on the in-game information service known as Galnet. Replace 14 additionally brings a brand new tab on the galaxy map that may assist gamers to trace and take part within the battle.

As soon as a multi-platform title with console and Mac shoppers, Elite Harmful’ ongoing narrative is strictly a Home windows PC expertise now. Gamers who beforehand performed on consoles now have the chance for his or her save file to be transferred to PC. You’ll be able to learn the total Replace 14 patch notes on the Frontier Growth web site.